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Page 65
Norton laughed.
"In other words, some free-lance has made a bid to break your corner on
the crime market, eh?" he jeered. "Put one over on you without your
knowledge and consent? And without splitting two ways? That what you
mean?"
"I mean that I'd pay five hundred dollars out of my own pocket right
now for the dead-wood on the man who robbed Kemble."
"Kid Rickard is around once more; sure he didn't do it?"
"Yes, I am. Kid Rickard didn't do it."
Norton eased himself in the saddle, thoughtfully regarding Galloway.
And then, very abruptly:
"How about your friend, del Rio?"
It was the third time that he had mentioned del Rio's name in this
connection and to the third man. And now, but slightly different in
degree only, he saw the same look in Galloway's eyes which he had
brought into Cutter's and Kemble's.
"Del Rio?" repeated Galloway frowningly. "What makes you say that?"
"I'll collect your five hundred later," was Norton's laughing response.
Swerving out a little as he passed, he rode on.
CHAPTER XVII
A STACK OF GOLD PIECES
John Engle rapidly came to assume the nature and proportions of a
stubborn bulwark standing sturdily between Roderick Norton and the
fires of criticism, which, springing from little, scattered flames were
now a wide-spread blaze amply fed with the dry fuel of many fields.
Again there had been a general excitement over a crime committed, much
talk, various suspicions, and, in the end, no arrest made. Men who had
stood by the sheriff until now began to lose faith in him. They
recalled how, after the fight in the Casa Blanca, he had let Galloway
go and with him Antone and the Kid; their memories trailed back to the
killing of Bisbee of Las Palmas and the evidence of the boots. They
began to admit, at first reluctantly, then with angry eagerness, that
Norton was not the man his father had been before him, not the man they
had taken him to be. And all of this hurt Norton's stanch friend, John
Engle. All the more that he, too, saw signs of hesitancy which he
found it hard to condone.
"Let him alone," he said many a time. "Give him his chance and a free
hand. He knows what he is doing."
From that point he began to make excuses, first to himself and then to
others. People were forgetting that only a short time ago the sheriff
had lain many days at the point of death; that his system had been
overtaxed; that not yet had his superb strength come back to him. Wait
until once more he was physically fit.
It was merely an excuse, and at the outset no man knew it better than
the banker himself. But as time went by without bringing results and
tongues grew sharper and more insistent everywhere, Engle grew
convinced that there was a grain of truth in his trumped-up argument.
He invited Norton to his home, had him to dinner, watched him keenly,
and came to the conclusion that Norton was riding on his nerves, that
he had not taken sufficient time to recuperate before getting his feet
back into the official stirrups, that the strain of his duties was
telling on him, that he needed a rest and a change or would go to
pieces.
But Norton, the subject broached, merely shook his head.
"I'm all right, John," he said a little hurriedly and nervously. "I am
run down at the heels a bit, I'll admit. But I can't stop to rest
right now. One of these days I'll quit this job and go back to
ranching. Until then . . . Well, let them talk. We can't stop them
very well."
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